FOTODOK Book Club # 12 – with Simon Roberts & Mathieu Asselin *SOLD OUT*

Detail

Live talkshow in which photographer and photo-book aficionado Rob Hornstra goes on stage with makers of photo books: photographers, designers and publisher are interrogated about there latest projects. Acclaimed (international) makers talk about the stories they try to tell and the choices they make when translating them into a photo book. Expect compelling content with the occasional critical note. Three books are always discussed with makers, designers and other professionals. These books are on sale during the evening (and can be signed!).

The 12th edition of FOTODOKs Book Club will take place in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht.

For ticket holders there will be a free tour through Rob Hornstra’s exhibition Man Next Door, which is on display at the Centraal Museum. The tour will start at 19.oo sharp.

Our guests at the 12th edition of the Book Club are:

Simon Roberts (UK) Simon Roberts (b.1974) is a British photographer whose work deals with our relationship to landscape and notions of identity and belonging. Roberts has spent the last decade photographing various events and places across Britain in a bid to capture communal experiences and shared histories. The body of work has come together in a new book published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, called Merrie Albion – Landscape Studies of a Small Island, and sees images that record “social practices and customs linked to the British landscape”. Within the series, allusions to “the economic and political theatre” that have shaped recent history are also present, providing a detailed portrait of the UK.

Mathieu Asselin (FR) Mathieu Asselin’s takedown of the US chemical giant Monsanto stands apart from other issue-based photo book projects that have tended to take a more measured, arms-length approach when tackling controversial subjects. Asselin’s photo book does no such thing and takes aim at the many failings of Monsanto and unloads every ounce of ammunition he can muster at the various targets. Monsanto received a special mention at the Les Rencontres d’Arles Dummy Award, and this year he has been nominated for the prestigious Deutsche Börse price.

Esther Hovers (NL) project False Positives  is about intelligent surveillance systems. These are camera’s that are said to be able to detect deviant behaviour within public space. False Positives is set around the question of normative behaviour. Her images emulate the actions these cameras would deem “deviant behaviour.” Connected to highly sophisticated software, the cameras can, among other things, detect abnormal activity like a person leaving a package or backpack on a busy street corner and alert the authorities. This, of course, prompts all kinds of conversations about privacy, security, and control. Hover hopes to contribute to the discussion. Should intelligent surveillance cameras be the judge of us?

Jan Banning (NL) will be presenting his book Red Utopia, for which he did a crowd-funding presentation in a previous edition of the Book Club. Red Utopia is a visual research in to the current state of Communism, 100 years after the Russian Revolution.